An experiment in interactive lap top use – working in smugmug, while blogging :))

Recently I re-discovered some pictures I took around 2003/04 in the loop in Chicago. Among them a few snaps of the undulating titanium pieces, which the genius of Gehry molded into a bandshell, of all things! You must read this story by Lynn Becker, describing the inauguration of Millennium Park, the home of Gehry’s creation – and other wonderful pieces, like the ‘Bean’. Chicago remains my favorite city!!

A friend of mine started a very gripping conversation about ‘story telling’. She found an unexpected enrichment of her relationship with her mother, through listening to her mother’s life story and recording it. The trust of one woman to confide her life, as she remembers it, to another woman, who is also her daughter. The trust of a mother in her daughter to respect boundaries, censorship, if you will, to present her life’s story as she, the mother wishes, not how the daughter may perceive it. The daughter thus becomes part of her mother’s past. Yet, as she researches facts about her mother’s life, the daughter also expends these new tentacles, which connect her with past generations, to other relatives of her own, and future generations as well. The mother’s story develops into the daughter’s story, as she begins to record her own experiences.

Another friend recently came across stories and pictures of her family’s past generations, triggering memories of relatives gone, but still vividly present in her mind. These two incidences of generational connections, but especially the mother-daughter bond, my friend feels so strongly through sharing in her mother’s experiences, are also conjuring up such sad thoughts of a mother’s tales forever lost. I am thinking of my teenage nieces, who lost their mother to cancer this March. The elder one expressed such sorrow about never been able to ask all the questions she has about her mum’s life. Never again will she be able to listen to her mother’s stories! Atropos mercilessly cut their mother’s thread of life and countless stories are lost forever. Keep telling your stories, as well as listen closely to the story teller!